Replay: The History of Video Games

by Donovan, Tristan

  A few focused on appealing to loyal arcade-going video game players by producing ever more challenging and intense variants on existing game genres. One of the fruits of these attempts to appeal to the dedicated arcade gamer was the emergence of the ‘bullet hell’ shooter, a sub-genre 2D shoot ’em ups that threw players into ever more hectic fire fights where the screen was often covered in a blizzard of enemy bullets. Arcade game makers Toaplan had paved the way for the bullet hell shooters with its fierce 1993 game Batsugun, but the genre really took shape when a group of former Toaplan staff founded Cave.

  Cave took the challenge of Batsugun to new heights with its debut release, 1995’s DonPachi, which pitted players against a daunting storm of enemy fire that could only be survived if players memorised the pre-set patterns of the bullets so they could steer through the maze of enemy fire. For Japanese shoot ’em up aficionados in need of ever tougher games the ability to beat bullet hell games became a source of pride. The sub-genre became so popular in Japan that VHS tapes demonstrating how to complete these games became big sellers.

  But of all the coin-op game makers’ efforts to keep players coming to the arcades it was the music games that followed in the footsteps of PaRappa the Rapper that were most successful. Konami became the first company to reinvent the music game for the arcades with 1997’s Beatmania, which gave players a DJ turntable and mixer and challenged them to play in time to various techno tunes. Instead of following PaRappa’s call-and-response action, Beatmania required players to time their actions to coincide with the beats that appeared on the screen as lines falling down towards a marker that indicated when the beat would be played. Beatmania lacked the free-styling improvisation of PaRappa the Rapper, but its booming speakers and its ability to make players feel as if they were playing the music made it a big draw in Japanese arcades. Konami followed Beatmania with a spate of similar games that used different instruments, including 1999’s Guitar Freaks and the following year’s Keyboardmania.

  Konami’s music game efforts also resulted in 1998’s Dance Dance Revolution, where players had to dance in time to on-screen prompts by stepping on large metal buttons.[3] As well as bringing a physical element to the game, Konami sought to make the game enjoyable for spectators as well as players, equipping the machine with loud speakers, flashing lights, giant screens and an almost stage-like platform for the player to strut their stuff on. The very best Dance Dance Revolution players could even throw in their own dance moves on top of those required by the game. Dance Dance Revolution became a huge success in Japan and Europe, sending Konami’s income soaring by 260 per cent between the 1997/98 and 1998/99 financial years. It even caught the attention of West Virginia’s health officials who put the machines into schools in the hope of tackling the state’s position as the US’s obesity capital.

  But the edge that music games gave the arcades was short-lived. Konami released a PlayStation version of Guitar Freaks, complete with a sold-separately guitar controller, in 1999 and console-only titles such as the improvisational duelling of Gitaroo Man and the synaesthesia-inspired trance experience of Rez quickly reclaimed music games for the home.[4]

  But most of these music games, with their Japanese visuals and pop, had failed to connect with US consumers, who tended to prefer traditional hard rocking stars to cartoon dogs with a taste for ragga or techno. As a resulsices remained on the fringes of video games in North America. The breakthrough that took the music game into the US mainstream came from Harmonix Music Systems, a game studio based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that wanted to find ways to let non-musicians play music. Harmonix specialised in music games but, despite critical acclaim, its abstract music titles Amplitude and Frequency had been snubbed by consumers. Figuring that its earlier efforts were just too cerebral to be popular, Harmonix decided to embrace the mainstream.

  It started by teaming up with Konami to produce Karaoke Revolution, a PlayStation 2 game that rated players on their pitch and octave as they sang along to a selection of popular hits. Karaoke Revolution was a groundbreaking step, paving the way for later karaoke music games such as Sony’s SingStar series and Harmonix’s own Rock Band series, where up to four players could experience performing as a band complete with singer. After completing Karaoke Revolution, Harmonix decided to revisit the guitar controller ideas of Guitar Freaks and Gitaroo Man. But instead of the jazzy Japanese pop of Gitaroo Man, Harmonix married the guitar game to western rock music to create Guitar Hero, a game that let non-musicians live out their dreams of rock stardom.

  “In November 2005 Harmonix founder Alex Rigopulos sent me a copy of Guitar Hero,” said Manny Gerard, the former Warner Communications executive who invested in Harmonix in the late 1990s. “I have four grandchildren aged 11 to 14. That Thanksgiving I stuck them in a room with a PlayStation 2 and handed them this game. Three hours later we had to pry them out of the room, if we’d left them alone they’d still be in there playing this game.”

  Guitar Hero became a multi-million selling success that later evolved into a music platform that allowed players to download new tracks to play. It even had enough influence to break new artists and introduce old acts to a new generation. British heavy metal band Dragonforce were just one example. After its song Through the Fire and Flames appeared in 2007’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, sales of the track soared from 55,000 to 624,000 copies. Soon Guitar Hero’s publisher, Activision Blizzard, was talking about charging record labels to have their artists’ songs featured in the game rather than paying for the rights to include them.

  For arcade game producers the music game genre offered only temporary salvation from decline. The on-the-move gaming of mobile phones, the depth of home console games and the social networking of the internet meant the aades were increasingly irrelevant for those after video gaming thrills. Arcades began turfing out video games in favour of more profitable snack dispensers and gambling games. And as the arcade operators turned their backs on video games, many of the companies that had forged the game industry did the same. Midway, which had also bought its arcade-making rival Atari Games in 1996, stopped making arcade games altogether in 2000. Data East sold off its arcades to Sega before going under in 2003 while Taito shut down its US operation.

  New Hampshire’s Funspot, the world’s largest arcade centre, refocused on bingo, bowling, mini-golf and food. The centre’s video games ended up being used to form its American Classic Arcade Museum section – a nostalgic not-for-profit throwback to the glory days of the coin-operated video game. “The museum is a labour of love,” said Lawton. “Most of us were around when these games were new and being a part of the preservation process is a rewarding experience and it is fun to watch the players who come into relive these great classic games.”

  The video game arcade – the birthplace of video gaming – had been reduced to rose-tinted nostalgia and fading memories.

  [1]. The popularity of arcades declined most significantly in Europe and North America. Japanese arcades, while declining steeply in number, did better thanks in part to the huge popularity of sticker photo booths. In mainland Asia and other nations, including Afghanistan, where home computers and consoles are rare, arcade video games are still successful and in some cases growing in number.

  [2]. Galeco was one of the last remnants of Spain’s once thriving video game industry. While Spain was a major European producer of games in the 1980s, the move to more advanced home computers at the end of that decade proved traumatic for the country’s game publishers. By the middle of the 1990s almost all of Spain’s leading game companies had shut down with only Dinamic surviving thanks to its popular budget soccer game PC Fútbol. While Spain still had its fair share of game developers, the early promise of the country’s game business was never fulfilled.

  [3]. The idea had been tried before with Dance Aerobics, a 1987 game for the NES that worked with Bandai’s Power Pad accessory – a plastic sheet with 12 buttons that were controlled by stepping on them.

  [4].
Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where the stimulation of one sense prompts a person to involuntarily experience another sense. For example, a person with the condition might see a blue sky and that provokes the taste of apples in his or her mouth. Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky’s exploration of the condition in hart inspired Rez’s creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi to synchronise the game’s sounds, graphics and the vibrations of its specially made ‘trance vibrator’ device.

  Making MUD: Roy Trubshaw working on MUD

  , circa late 1979/early 1980. Courtsey of Richard Bartle

  23. You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Died In MUD

  Just after midnight on the 9th August 1997, game designer Richard Garriott logged onto his latest and most ambitious creation Ultima Online, an online game that allowed thousands to play together in his fantasy realm of Britannia. Controlling his in-game persona Lord British he headed to the ramparts of his castle in the town of Trinsic with Lord Blackthorn, the alter ego of the game’s associate producer Starr Long, to address the crowd gathered in the castle grounds below.

  The courtyard teemed with people. They had gathered because today was the end of the world – the pre-release ‘beta’ testing of Ultima Online was about to end. Over the past few months a select few fans of Garriott’s games had been living a second life within the virtual world of Ultima Online, helping its creators spot any problems that would need to be fixed before its formal launch in September.

  The seconds to the end of the test were counting down as Lord British began to address the crowd. Soon the Britannia they had come to know would be no more. Lord British thanked the crowd for their contribution to Ultima Online and began to explain the details of the commercial version that would launch a few weeks later. “This day was the finale of the beta,” said Garriott. “We had everyone who was playing on the same server. Everybody knew that at a certain hour the servers would be turned off and in the hour or so that preceded literally turning off the switch, me and Starr teleported from city to city to thank people for their participation.”

  The atmosphere as Garriott and Long teleported through the world they had created on their way to Trinsic was jovial. “People would do really funny things,” said Garriott. “In the city of Moonglow when we arrived people, as a joke, mooned us – took off their pants leaving them in underwear really and faced away from us and bowed as a mass of people. It was hilarious to see everybody in Moonglow mooning us.”

  One of the people gathered in Trinsic to hear Garriott’s farewell address was Ali Shahrooz, an internet consultant from Indianapolis whose Ultima Online persona was a thief called Rainz. And he was in a mischievous mood. Shahrooz decided to pickpocket some of the people in the crowd and came across a firefiespell that could create a wall of fire. For fun he promptly cast the spell onto the battlements where Lord British and Lord Blackthorn were standing. Shahrooz expected nothing to happen. It was well known that both Lord British and Lord Blackthorn were invincible characters. “Both Richard and I responded ‘ha, ha, ha, don’t you know our powers? You can’t destroy us, we are much stronger than your puny firefield’,” said Long. To emphasise the point Garriott made Lord British walk back into the flames: “My first reaction because it was a fire was to step out, however then I thought I don’t have to worry, my character’s immortal. So I just walked back into the fire and then fell over dead.”

  Garriott, unlike Long, had failed to ‘switch on’ his character’s immortality. Lord British was dead. Pandemonium ensued. Rich Vogel, the producer of Ultima Online, was among the game developers at the scene: “We had something like 15 game masters surrounding him like the secret service.[1] It was like when someone shoots the president – everyone runs around and protects him. We immediately surrounded him and teleported him out of the area.”

  Long, meanwhile, had decided to deal with the culprit. “We were all just shocked,” said Long. “Staying in character, I became enraged and started summoning demons into the crowd and summoning lightning.”

  Chaos broke out in the castle grounds as giant demons slaughtered the crowd indiscriminately and the defenceless fled in panic. “All of the game masters started summoning demons and devils and dragons – all of the biggest, most horrible monsters they could,” said Garriott. “The creatures they summoned were far, far more powerful than any human in the vicinity so in no time they wiped out everyone in the square. People are shocked and horrified and screaming, running for their lives, so to speak, and the ones that are killed are trying to get themselves resurrected and back into the game before the servers go off.”

  As the scene filled with monsters and death-dealing spells, the action ground into slow motion as the computer server running the game struggled to cope with the sheer volume of information it had to take in and send out to the players sat on their computers across the world. Eventually the server buckled and Ultima Online’s beta test ended abruptly in the middle of a chaotic bloodbath played out on hundreds of computer monitors across the world. “We had this initial reaction of being really angry at this guy for doing it but then we realised it’s kind of awesome really, it shows that this game is really about what the players want – they’re really more in control than we are,” said Long.

  Ultima Online marked the fruition of a 20-year quest to create a virtual world that could be inhabited by hundreds of players on separate computers connected via telephone lines. The journey that ended in Lord British’s assassination began in 1977 when Don Woods released his reworking of Will Crowther’s Adventure, the first text adventure game. Among the many early computer users who played Adventure was Roy Trubshaw, a British computer science student at the University of Essex. Trubshaw thought its text-bd input method would make a good interface for his pet project to build a virtual world that users of different computers could explore together. “I liked the idea of multiplayer games – wandering around the locations in an Adventure-like environment and doing stuff to or with other folks in the same game as you was an unutterably cool idea,” said Trubshaw.

  Trubshaw invested his time in figuring out how to get the computers that the various players would use to communicate with each other, and then began designing a virtual world for people to log into, explore and interact with. There would be no goals, no game as such, just a world other than our own to discover. He called his virtual world MUD – short for Multi-User Dungeon in a nod to the early name for the text adventure Zork!.

  To help him fill this world with content, Trubshaw turned to his friend Richard Bartle, another student at the university. “We first met when he joined the Essex Computer Society,” said Trubshaw. “This society was created ostensibly to allow students to study all things computer-like in their own time but in reality allowed us to gain more access to the main computer and play with it. It soon became apparent that Richard was (a) a genius and (b) interested in games of all kinds but especially games of strategy and cunning.”

  Bartle had been designing games for his own entertainment since his early teens, mainly pen-and-paper role-playing games and choose-your-own-adventure story books. “One that had quite a big influence on my views on MUD was a single-player role-playing game that I started when I was 12 or something,” said Bartle. “Role-playing games hadn’t formally been invented back then – there wasn’t even a name for that particular type of game. I started off creating a continent like mid-1800s Africa. I had an explorer and what happened is I would write the diary of the explorer and explore the continent I had created. I wouldn’t know exactly where I was going to go or what was going to happen. It was a big influence on my ideas of what an imaginary world was, how to build a world and how to make it real.”

  From the off Bartle started pushing for Trubshaw to turn MUD into more of a game and, since his attempt to create a fully functioning virtual world was proving impossible given the computing power available, Trubshaw agreed. “Roy wanted to build a world, a place that was separate from the real world. It wasn’t puzzle-driven, it wasn�
�t a game world at all,” said Bartle, who took control of the game’s development when Trubshaw stepped back from the project to focus on completing his degree. “I wanted there to be game aspects to it. One of the obvious things to do was to put in puzzles, but they don’t really work in multiplayer games, so most of the puzzles were chainings of goals. So I want to get some treasure, the treasure is behind the door, to get through the door I need a particular key which is held by a particular monster, so I need to kill that monster, which is behind a portcullis, and to get past the portcullis I need someone to help me open it. That’s chaining of goals.”

  Having used these kind of treasure-hunting goals to give MUD a gaming foundation, Bartle incorporated other game concepts such as the character levels from Dungeons & Dragons. He figured that levels were a good way to motivate players and a useful means of conveying each individual’s knowledge of the game to others: “I wanted people to have some goal that was attainable and I wanted people to be able to tell, just by looking, how good another player was. I also named the characters by their level. I didn’t say Freddy level 6, each level had a name, so it would be Freddy the Warrior or Freddy the Necromancer.”

  Bartle’s completed version of MUD, which went live in 1980, offered people the chance to adopt a new persona through which they could live, converse, fight, fall in love and explore a virtual fantasy world. It was not the first game to let users of different computers play together, but never before had a multiplayer game brought them together in an alternative reality where socialising and freedom of choice was as important a part of the experience as the goals of the game itself.[2] “Right from the beginning we knew this was something that was always going to be a wondrous place that was different,” said Bartle. “MUD was always about freedom. We always wanted to make a virtual world – a place where you could be and become yourself free from the constraints of the real world. What we were trying to express through the design was a statement about freedom.”